Graham Greene citations

“Le désespoir est le prix à payer lorsqu'on s'est fixé un but impossible. C'est, dit-on, le péché impardonnable, mais c'est un péché où ne tombent ni l'homme vraiment mauvais, ni le corrompu. Il leur reste toujours l'espoir. Ils n'atteignent jamais le point de congélation où l'on connaît l'échec absolu. Seul, l'homme de bien portera toujours en son cœur ce pouvoir de se damner.”

“Montrez-moi un homme heureux, moi, je vous montrerai la suffisance, l'égoïsme, la malignité… à moins que ce ne soit la totale ignorance.”

“Il fut animé du loyalisme que nous ressentons tous envers le malheur, ce sentiment qui est notre véritable apanage.”

“Les thrillers sont comme la vie - plus comme la vie que vous… c'est ce que nous avons tous fait du monde.”

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

“Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.”

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.”

“Hate is a lack of imagination.”

“I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.”

“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”

“So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.”

“But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light and…”

“I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love.”

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in… We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.”

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

“A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.”

“There's a virtue in slowness, which we have lost”

“Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises …”

“Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.”

“Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”

“Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.”

“It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”

“It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”

“Innocence is a kind of insanity”

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

“People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations”

“You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.”

“Most things disappoint till you look deeper.”

“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.”

“I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.”

“We forget very easily what gives us pain.”

“When we are not sure, we are alive.”